


but you had to go

by still_i_fall



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Harry's POV, I really don't know what this is, I've just been listening to so much Phoebe Bridgers recently, It could be canon, Like, Technically Canon, Which is a first for me, if you squint a little - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:08:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24952813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/pseuds/still_i_fall
Summary: “You know, Harry,” Allie says softly, a bit like she’s about to whisper some secret, “you’re really good at pretending.”-or harry bingham and what comes before and after the end (in ten parts)
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Comments: 15
Kudos: 70





	but you had to go

**Author's Note:**

> rather than working on my wips, i wrote this. oops?
> 
> (title and lyrics at beginning and end from the phoebe bridgers song _i know the end_. her new album came out last week, and it's the only thing i've been listening to.)

_i know, i know, i know_

**i.**

It’s the day of his dad’s funeral, and Harry can’t think. Everything is wrong in ways it wasn’t before. Everything is different. Everything has been different, but-- it’s real now. It’s real.

It’s the day of his dad’s funeral, and Harry is in that suit his mom picked out for him. And it feels too small, just barely, too tight around the sleeves. And that tie, the one with the red, the tiny bit of red because it’d been his dad’s favorite color, feels like it’s choking him, closing around his neck. His mom adjusts it every few minutes. He doesn’t tell her off.

His eyes are bloodshot, rimmed with red, and people aren’t supposed to see him like that, aren’t supposed to see him as anything but put together-- no matter the circumstance. Before grabbing his sister’s hand, before leading her out to where people stand, quiet and sorry about something that wasn’t their fault, he slips on that pair of sunglasses he’d worn two months ago while driving with Kelly to the beach. Sarah tilts her head to the side, but doesn’t say anything. It’s like that a lot now.

And he’s counting his breaths-- _one, two, three, four…_ \-- as if that’ll really do anything to calm him down. And he’s waiting for the xanax he’d taken earlier-- before they’d left they’d left the house, him standing in the bathroom, the cabinet thrown open, his eyes wide, breathing heavy, his mom somewhere upstairs-- to kick in. Maybe it already has. Maybe this feeling he has right now, this feeling he’s had ever since… Maybe it’s never going to leave, not now, not after--

Cassandra Pressman is looking at him with something like pity in her eyes. Pity. And she must think it reads as sympathy, others must too. Cassandra is looking at him soft and sad, a _sorry_ on her lips, loud enough for him to hear, for his mom to hear, for his sister to hear.

He wants to tell her that he’s sick of pity, that he doesn’t want it anymore, that he’s worried that pity is all he’s ever going to get. He wants to tell her that she doesn’t need to be here, that this isn’t her problem, that--

Allie Pressman brushes against him gently, on accident, probably, not that he really cares either way, and his eyes land on hers. She blinks up at him. She breathes out her condolences. Harry takes his first deep breath.

**ii.**

He’s waiting outside the AP Gov classroom for Kelly to finish talking to the teacher about some assignment that she’d done well on. They’re probably talking to her about her future, and Harry can’t stand to hear any more of that shit.

Once upon a time, when he was five, he wanted to be a doctor, a surgeon just like his dad. And when he was nine, he was fixated on becoming President, if only because that was Cassandra’s dream. Now, his mom wants him to go into law, wants him to go off to college in New York and spend summers interning at big firms. Maybe that’s not a bad plan. At least it’s all laid out for him.

He’s waiting outside the AP Gov classroom, leaning up against a locker, his arms crossed against his chest, his gaze fixed down at the floor. If he focuses, he won’t tap his foot. He remembers Kelly pointing out the habit to him, that unsaid _after_ somewhere in her words. She hadn’t been annoyed, but--

“That’s my locker,” Allie Pressman says sharply, drawing his gaze up. She’s got her backpack slung over one shoulder, the strap sitting on top of some of her hair. He’s never told anyone this, probably never will, but he’d had this weird fixation on her hair when they were younger. It looked like gold in the sunlight, and made her look a bit like a star-- too bright to look at for more than a moment.

“Can you move?” she asks, and it’s not a question, not really. There’s something like annoyance laced in her voice, but a smile too, there because she seems to smile a lot. He’s tapping his foot again. “I need to get into it.”

“Yeah,” he finally says, stepping off to the side. “Sorry, Pressman.”

She shrugs, and he tries not to stare at her hair. _It’s like he’s ten again._ He fails.

**iii.**

They’re paired up for a chemistry lab, and she’s forced herself into the seat next to him, her notes crossing over some invisible line in the table that divides his space from hers. 

“Those are a mess, Pressman,” he comments wrly, and Allie rolls her eyes, her nose scrunching up, a ghost of a smile hidden in the edges of her mouth. 

“Doesn’t really matter as long as I’m able to understand them.”

He pauses, playing with the edge of a sheet of paper. “Yeah,” he concedes quietly, “I guess not.”

Later, when he’s at home studying, because that is something he has to do, no matter what Cassandra says (things might come easy to him, he’ll admit that, but that doesn’t mean it’ll always stay that way), he finds a sheet of her notes mixed in with his. Her handwriting’s soft looping, her letters drifting off suddenly as if surprised by the end of the page, words half highlighted in neon pink and yellow and green, equations underlined in gel pen once, twice, three times, just for good measure. 

He finds himself staring at them. He can imagine her in class, an elbow propped up on the desk as she scribbled down whatever was being said. He can imagine her chewing on the end of that black bic pen she’s always using, can imagine her searching through her bag for a highlighter, or tearing a sheet of paper out of her notebook to hand to whoever’s sitting next to her.

Minutes pass as he stares at the sheet of paper. He’s still unable to understand it.

**iv.**

Sometimes, he’ll see her mouthing along to Cassandra’s lines, her eyes closed or fixed on the ceiling, up in the rafters where the lights hang, where the stars would sit if the roof opened up.

It’s funny because he remembers that first play he did opposite Cassandra, freshman year, back when she was still taller than him. She’d learned all of his lines right along with her own and would correct him whenever he messed up. He hated it. She must’ve known that.

He wonders if Allie ever helps Cassandra rehearse, if they sit on the couch and read lines back and forth, if Allie’s got his part memorised too, if she whispers the words along with him while he stands on stage.

“How come you never audition?” he asks her on opening night. He’s waiting for his cue. He wonders if she’d let him miss it. 

“It’s not really my thing,” she tells him, playing with her clipboard. And he wants to ask what is _her thing_ , if it’s being assistant stage manager, being Cassandra’s little sister, being the Pressman who’d been loud and bright, all vivid colors once upon a time. He wants to ask her where that version of her went.

“Maybe next year,” she continues, staring past him. From where they stand, you can see the entire stage. Faintly, it registers that someone’s speaking out to the audience, but he can’t seem to focus on the words. “When you and Cass are gone. They’ll need replacements.”

“You’re more than just some _replacement_ , Pressman,” he says before he can think the words through. They feel right, but they feel too sharp, too, feel like something he’s not supposed to say out loud.

And she opens her mouth, her head tilted to the side, her focus on him now, eyes flitting around his face as if she’s searching for meaning behind his words. He thinks for a second that she’s going to ask for it, for meaning, only suddenly she’s nudging him towards the stage. 

“That’s you cue, Harry.”

After the show, while everyone else is talking to family and friends and whoever else showed up, Harry stands alone in the green room. From a bouquet of flowers meant for Kelly, he pulls out a single rose, laying it on top of Allie’s clipboard. He wants to wait to watch her discover it but doesn’t.

**v.**

He’s one of the first on the bus, slipping into a seat near the back. He leans his head against the window, watching as his breath fogs up the glass. He sees her out on the grass, standing next to her parents and Cassandra. Allie’s wearing a blue cap, and he remembers suddenly them being eight and nine and her stealing his baseball cap to wear as her own. It was for a dare, probably. He can’t remember if she ever gave it back.

The busses fill up in the minutes after, and Harry grins along with everyone else as people lean out the windows yelling goodbyes to their families. He tries not to think about how his mom isn’t standing on the sidewalk, tries not to think about how long his sister had held onto him before he left.

Everything’s loud, but he doesn’t mind it. There’s a game of truth or dare going on somewhere nearby, Becca Gelb laughing as she presses a kiss to Sam Elliot’s cheek, Will LeClaire rolling his eyes as he takes Allie’s cap and places it on his own head. 

Harry doesn’t join in on that game, but his attention stays fixed on it, even as he talks to Luke and Helena about prom and graduation and everything else everyone seems to be so excited about. Last week, he’d brought up taking a gap year to _figure shit out_ over dinner, and his mom had stared at him, blinking, shaking her head, moving on.

No one reads the time, but as the sun starts to set, fading into the horizon, immortalized in shaky pictures and on Instagram stories, people begin to fall asleep. Behind him, Helena’s breathing grows faint, and everyone is suddenly quiet with their words.

Again, he watches as that group-- Cassandra, Allie, Becca, Will, Sam-- tell jokes back and forth. Becca’s taking pictures, the flash turned on, lighting up their corner of the bus every time it goes off. It lights up Allie’s face, shining until it feels like the only thing visible. He catches himself staring and forces himself to look away.

Kelly’s head is on his shoulder, and she’s whispering something about prom, but the last thing he hears before he falls asleep is Allie Pressman’s laugh, clear and bright even from halfway across the bus. Even with his eyes closed, he swears he can see her.

**vi.**

In the church, he opens a beer for her with the heel of his palm and the corner of a church pew. She pours half of it into a red solo cup, pushing the bottle back into his hand.

“How come you’re never at my parties?” he asks, and it’s a question reserved only for when he’s already a few drinks in, a question he’s thought about more times than he can count.

She tilts her head to the side, thinking. “I’m not sure you’ve ever really invited me,” she finally says, taking a sip from her drink.

He lets out an exhale before saying, too quickly to think first, “You’ve always been invited.” And in the moments after saying the words, he wonders if they’re true. The Pressman sisters don’t seem to care much for partying, or at least Cassandra doesn’t. He wonders if Allie’s sat waiting for an invitation, for him to nudge her as they pack up their books after chemistry, to the say _I’m having a party at my place tonight_ casually. He wonders why he never did. He wonders if ever expected her to show up anyway. Right now, he can’t seem to remember the answer to that question.

“You don’t have to say that, Harry.”

He blinks over at her, his eyes catching on how she taps her fingers against the cup. He thinks back to her pen on the edge of the desk in class, to him tapping his foot as he tried to sit still, to her clipping and unclipping paper in the clipboard. “I mean it, Allie.”

She smiles over at him, something soft in her eyes that he can’t quite read. It’s so loud in the church. He’s not used to it. “Yeah?” 

He nods. “Yeah.”

**vii.**

After the power goes out, she’s the last one at his house, throwing plastic cups and paper plates and half empty bags of chips into garbage bags. They bump elbows while washing dishes. He keeps wanting to ask her why she’s stayed.

He doesn’t, though. He doesn’t want to think about the answer, whatever it might be. And he doesn’t want to tell her that he’d _wanted_ her to stay. No, not right now.

“How much longer do you think everyone is going to be able to pretend like things are okay?” she asks suddenly. Rain is pelting the window, and she’s staring at it, watching it fall. There’s a lantern between the two of them, pulled from the attic. He can still only barely make her out.

The lantern reminds him of the one time he went camping with his dad. He was eleven and it was the summer his sister was born. The house was loud. He remembers all of the green. He remembers a campfire and a tent and those boots he wore only once. He remembers asking his dad if they could ever go again. He can’t remember the answer.

“Isn’t it better when people think things are okay?”

She turns to face him. In the light, flickering and faint, he can’t seem to focus on anything but the curve of her chin, the bridge of her nose, the way her eyes reflect everything right back to him. “There’s a difference between thinking and pretending.”

He’s not sure how to respond to that. Outside, the rain is getting harder, the storm passing overhead. He takes a step closer to her, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear. She sighs.

“You know, Harry,” Allie says softly, a bit like she’s about to whisper some secret, “you’re really good at pretending.”

And while he blinks down at her, trying to think through his words for once, trying to find the right things to say, while she picks up her phone, Cassandra’s name on the screen, while she reaches for his hand to pull him out the door, all he can really think about is how good she is at it too.

**viii.**

He calls her.

It’s stupid. It should be Kelly that he’s dialing while drunk, but it almost never is. It shouldn’t be Allie. 

He fumbles with his phone, and she picks up before he has a chance to end the call. “Hello?”

He inhales, thinks of things he could say, should say, would say if everything was different, if things were simpler. He thinks of things that could’ve been said _before_ \-- something stupid, maybe, about pre-gaming, about a party at his place afterwards. Maybe she’d laugh.

And just like that, he’s reminded of every single chance he’s ever had to say something to her, anything to her. In chemistry, maybe, or while she pulled books out of her locker. On the torn edge of her sheets of notes, or as he drove by her walking home.

It doesn’t matter. He didn’t say anything then. He doesn’t say anything. She hangs up.

And his mom had wanted him to plan out something elaborate as a way to ask Kelly to prom. His mom had promised a limousine rental and an empty house. Prom was supposed to signify the start to the very end of senior year. And by now, he should be out of West Ham. Sometimes, early in the mornings before the sun’s even properly risen, he’ll still drive out the exits, thinking that everything that’s happened these past few weeks has only been a bad dream.

He takes a sip of whatever drink Jason had made him earlier, something disgusting, something sweet and bitter and sharp that leaves him feeling heavy. He wants to tell Jason off for it, but can’t seem to find the words. Things are tangled and messy. Things are wrong.

Harry’s hands shake while he tries to knot his bowtie. Grizz does it for him.

**ix.**

He keeps brown paper lunch bags in his bathroom cabinet, a bottle of xanax on top of the stack, toothpaste and floss and those bobby pins his sister would leave everywhere littered beside it.

After prom, he spends an entire day laying on the floor of his bathroom, the tile cool pressed up against his cheek. And he doesn’t have anyone to tell this to, but here it goes anyway:

He thinks that Cassandra’s death is somehow his fault.

He’s not sure how; he doesn’t remember last night for anything more than what it was-- prom. Eighties music. Bad dancing. An open bar. A white pill.

Allie Pressman in that pink dress.

But it’s those thoughts he’s had as Kelly, the one thing he thought would stay constant through all of this, slips away for what feels like the last time. It’s those thoughts that form as he lays in bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, five strangers sleeping in his little sister’s bedroom. It’s those thoughts he has when he’s trying not to miss home, those thoughts he has when he’s too tired to sleep, those thoughts he has when he realises that he’s never been more alone.

_It’d be better with her gone._

Kelly calls in the morning, and Harry spends the day laying on the floor of his bathroom, a crumpled paper bag laying next to him. And all he can think about his Allie and the flower crowns she used to place on her sisters head, the _get well soon_ cards she’d collect, and the way she’d sit on the grass beside Cassandra listening to stories while everyone else played tag or catch or hide-n-seek.

And the memories hit him over and over, hours passing, years flying backwards until he’s at the start again, too young to know anything about stupid rivalries and competitions and that belief that he somehow had to be _better_ , better, better-- the best.

**x.**

It’s the morning after Cassandra’s funeral, and Harry can’t breathe.

The sun is rising into a mess of red and orange, the colors bleeding upwards until they have nowhere else to go. He can’t remember leaving his house, but he’s outside anyway, the morning air cold, dew soaking in through his shoes.

He thinks about laying back onto the grass, about staring up at the sky. He thinks about wishing for home, wherever that is now. It sure as hell isn’t _here_.

Yesterday, they’d carried Cassandra out of the church wrapped in white sheets, and it’s stupid, but he couldn’t stop thinking of the year her and Allie dressed as ghosts for Halloween. And yesterday he’d been wearing that suit and that tie, and he’d sat in the back of the church playing with his ring-- the one his dad left him, the only thing Harry really worries about losing now-- and counting his breaths-- _one, two, three, four…_ \-- even though that's never done anything to calm him down before. As he stepped outside, everyone pressed closed, he’d pulled his sunglasses on, and they don’t remind him of going to the beach with Kelly anymore. He wonders if anyone had seen the red around his eyes. He wonders if he really cares.

The sun is rising, and soon the town will come to life. Until then, it’s quiet. That reminds him of home.

It’s the morning after Cassandra’s funeral, and Harry finds himself outside of the church, standing in the grass, watching Allie Pressman lay next to a grave.

And he’s not thinking as he takes a step, and then another, and another, until he’s close enough that he could reach down and touch her hair. He could. 

He doesn’t.

She blinks up at him, and they’re young again, eight and nine, or maybe ten and eleven, her reminding him again and again why people stare up at the sky searching for stars. And he wants to tell her that he remembers Cassandra for more than just every single insecurity he’s tried linking to her successes, that they’d grown up together, that this isn’t what he’d wanted. He wants to tell her that he’s scared and tired and--

“I’m sorry, Allie,” he whispers, and she closes her eyes. He’s not sure whether or not she hears him, but he leaves anyway.

_i guess the end is here_

**Author's Note:**

> again, i have no clue what this was. expect more of your regularly scheduled hallie au's from me soon. ("soon" possibly being used very incorrectly)
> 
> [tumblr](https://in-my-head-i-do-everything-right.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hallieownsme)


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